That would have been a nearly impossible task when Kieling began work with the foundation in 1994. The position she holds today didn’t quite exist back then, so she improvised.

“We set out together — the board of trustees, myself and the community — to build a resource that would be permanent, charitable and provide some security for the future, and we just kind of figured out how to do that in the beginning by being curious, by studying what other community foundations were doing around the country,” she said in an interview with The Times’ Kelly Johnson.

Over time, the foundation has grown from an organization with $300,000 to one that manages nearly $100 million in assets and has granted about $55 million to dozens of nonprofit groups throughout the region.

HomeFront, HiTOPS and the Mercer Alliance to End Homelessness have benefitted from funds distributed by the PACF. Court Appointed Special Advocates of Mercer County and Farmers Against Hunger are some others.

Anyone cataloging good work in the area since the early ‘90s would probably find PACF funding as a common denominator.

And anyone interested in building a foundation could learn a lot from the work Kieling and her associates have done.

Under her leadership, the foundation became the first nationally certified community foundation in the state and among the first in the country.

Of course, the foundation’s success is also due to the generosity of the Mercer County community. Even in the worst days of the Great Recession, area businesses and residents reached deep in their pockets to help their struggling neighbors.

Kieling and the PACF helped that money go further and reach the organizations in the position to do the most good.

As the foundation searches for her successor, Kieling has left it — and the community — with another challenge in the form of educational disparity.

“How do we as a community deal with that? How is that OK that we have some of the very best schools in the country in this county and some of the very worst?” she says. “We should be morally outraged at that.“

As part of the answer, PACF has started funding a new project, Campaign Connect, aimed at getting schools, elected officials, parents and other community members to work together on addressing the needs of students.

The organization’s president calls it a bold move, saluting Kieling’s willingness “to invest in new ideas to better serve Mercer County.”